


Dear River

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Prompt:</b> "could you maybe do a fic where Gadreel almost kills himself because he feels like a burden but Sam stops him and just fluffyness?"</p><p> Gadreel had never been more alone than now, not even in his cell, and the loneliness was the worst of it. But the river was there, and it showed no sign of pushing him away: it only called him deeper, and he was fond of that feeling. It resembled an embrace now that he moved again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Void

* * *

 

He’d been more than this. Stronger. It gnawed inside him like cancer, eating away at what was left of him, the weakness - it consumed him whole, leaving nothing behind but the guilt and the shame. And what else? What else was he to begin with but mistakes, flaws, faults, a history of destruction and pain and suffering, both his own and that which he had caused with his own hands?

Gadreel loved the sunrise. He watched the colours grow in the horizon and wondered what it would feel like to have the sun touch him again like it had done centuries, millenias ago when he’d still been enough of a creature on his own to not let the light through like a web full of holes. Nothing seemed to touch him anymore. Even the pain was long overdue. He missed it; a part of him even missed the fear. It was easier to feel than to be dull and void like this. Now he couldn’t be sure if he’d been alive at all in months, a year; if he’d been alive since Heaven had cast him out at all, or if it had been an illusion.  
The wind that carried across the river’s bank was fresh, but it crossed right through where the sentry’s wings had once spanned. No more - but he hadn’t deserved them. It was only reasonable they were gone now. Nothing else would have made sense. Nothing else was quite right. He deserved this, did he not?  
The question had stopped bugging him. Yes, he deserved it.

He hesitated before taking off his shoes. The sand was cold under his bare feet, a strange sensation for an angel, but he wasn’t one anymore. The depth looked inviting and he didn’t seem to be able to muster the strength to resist: he’d looked at worse things like this. As his toes sank underneath the first lapping wave of the slowly coursing, wide and deep waters, he let out a small sigh and closed his eyes to the  _feel_  of something. His heart was racing as his ankles followed the feet underwater, and as the surface kept rising, rising underneath his knees. His jeans grew wet and heavy much faster than he walked and it felt like the cloth was dragging him deeper. He’d stopped now, as if to reconsider; as he opened his eyes, he opened them to glance behind him, excuses rushing into his mind, but he saw no one there. Of course not. There hadn’t been one to care since he’d driven the blade through Abner. He’d sealed this fate himself. At times it almost felt as if he could lie his way through it - the nightly hours when laughter filled the motel rooms they shared, with Sam drunk and Dean even worse and Castiel with a smile on his face even though he didn’t waste the alcohol to achieve it, but it only lasted so long before he realised he was on the outside of it, a spectator, like a bird of prey circling above wolves in the hopes of finding a scrap to remove the emptiness that reigned its belly. If he’d ever had hopes of being a part of the pack, those hopes were long gone by now: he was a burden, a dead weight that was dragged around out of pity above all other things, perhaps a sense of obligation as he’d done things that could not be overlooked. It wasn’t gratitude as much as it was duty. He was a brother to Castiel but in name only, more so now that there was no grace within him to join them together in essence. To the men on the backseat of whose car he travelled the country, he wasn’t much beyond a bad memory; he appreciated the tense smiles he got from them, but it wasn’t enough to keep up the illusion. He’d never been more alone than now, not even in his cell, and the loneliness was the worst of it all, that invisible blade stuck between his ribs with no relief and no way to push it in deeper.

But the river was there. It showed no sign of pushing him away, it only called him deeper, and he was fond of that feeling: it resembled an embrace now that he moved again, although the cold of the water flowing down from the mountains was bitter and ached in his bones and flesh.  
A smile made its way on his lips, and although it felt unfamiliar and strange, he didn’t kill it right away but kept it there as he turned his eyes towards the mountains looming in the early morning’s light, almost shrouded to nothing by the mist rising from the space between him and them. The others would look for him, no doubt. He knew well how to die but he didn’t know how to stay lost - to spare them the details. Was he far enough? No; someone would find him here. He glanced upstream but weariness settled into him, as if he was much beyond any movement and as if he had no choice. It would have to be here, no matter the consequences, as he neither had the strength to find a better place nor did he have the strength to even turn back and walk back to the shoreline.  
With a heavy sigh he knelt down in the water, bent his head to the stream and felt it grace the top of his head, wetting the hair that had grown into short curls; he opened his eyes again under the surface and stared into the muddy deep until the ironic dryness of his eyes forced him back above the water.

He stood up again, shirt wet to the shoulders, face dripping, and stared across the width of the river, body rocking quietly from side to side as he prepared for the last couple steps after which he could give himself to the course. The hollow within him ached, making him question if this was what he wanted, but of course it wasn’t; he just wanted that hollow gone, wanted to sleep so that the comfort of oblivion never ended. It wasn’t death that he wanted as much as it was the relief of being lost for good, the chance to rid him of the phantom pain where his wings had stretched behind him, the shaking and the gasping in the midnight hour when no one heard him but he no longer knew where he was and if any of the days past had been real at all. He was tired of being tired, of being afraid, and of not even feeling those things like they were within him, a part of him, or experiences in the first place - everything was outside of him and nothing surrounded him, nothing but the water which now eagerly caressed his abdomen, calling him back to its embrace. He turned his head down and watched his broken reflection, or that of the body into which he’d been imprisoned now, until a drop from above shattered it entirely. He raised his hand from under the water and wiped it across his face, huffing wearily.

There were steps behind him. Gadreel didn’t recognise them as such at first, but after a moment had passed without them and when they afterwards continued with haste, he felt his hair standing up and his heart skip a beat; he turned hastily around, fear on his face, to see Sam break the water’s surface next.  
The man crossed the few feet into the water like it wasn’t bitterly cold at all, and Gadreel could see that the river wasn’t inviting him in at all: it pushed aggressively against him as he broke deeper into it, but Sam had that strange fire within him that the fallen angel could still see although his vision was now limited to the realm of flesh and not an inch beyond it.  
Without words but something like horror stuck in his face the hunter grabbed onto the older’s wet shirt and pulled him back towards the shore with force enough to make the seams of the shirt give in - the sound seemed to echo in Gadreel’s ears as he stumbled a step backwards and, as if having no will of his own, followed Sam’s steps away from the depth. The river let go of him hesitantly, and each of his steps was heavier than the one before it, and when his bones had to support the whole weight of him he fell on his hands and knees onto the muddy shoreline, gasping for air and shaking from cold and something that went much deeper than the bite of it.

Sam was there with him, knees in the dirt and hands over his face that still remained turned towards the water: the man’s long fingers pushed into his wet hair and forced his head up, but his eyes couldn’t meet Sam’s so no matter how high up his head was turned and how much the man tried to aim his face towards his own, his gaze remained elsewhere.  
"What were you thinking?" the younger barked hoarsely, something choking him so that the words sounded difficult to speak as if he’d lost his speech entirely.  
"What the hell were you thinking?"

Gadreel felt a sigh pass through his nostrils - it sent drops of water onto Sam’s wrists, but the man didn’t seem to care. Instead, to the shock of the older’s, he leaned his warm forehead against Gadreel’s wet and cold and his hand slid over to the back of the other’s neck, and he held him by the shoulder with the other so hard that the fingertips threatened to bruise the flesh under Gadreel’s shirt. He shook and gasped, and the deafness, the ringing in the angel’s ears seemed to quiet down; something stirred within that nothingness of him and he finally raised his gaze to Sam’s face too close to his only to find that the man’s eyes were now closed in turn.

"God," the hunter breathed out, "tell me you weren’t doing what I think you were doing. Tell me you didn’t plan on it."

He didn’t expect an answer, or at least he didn’t offer space for it; Gadreel wouldn’t have had any for him, but when Sam’s grip of his shoulder turned to a pull around it and he fell against his shoulder and felt both of the man’s arms wrap around him, he forgot the question and ceased in the exact way he’d longer for. The whole world within him stopped, concentrated into the slow exhale that pushed through his nostrils, and when it was gone he didn’t breathe anymore, every muscle in him giving in to the hold like it had prepared to give into the river and it took a very long while before he remembered to inhale life back into him. It seeped into his bloodstream with a tingling sensation that hurried his heart to beat faster again, but this time a strange constricting feeling kept it in place instead of releasing it into the unleashed state of fear that it most often beat for. His numb hands moved stiffly to the other’s warm sides and when Sam didn’t budge or push him away, he slowly dared to wrap his own arms around the man instead; his whole human build was lighting up to this unfamiliar touch, the affection and care that it gave him, that was reserved  _for_ him alone, and he breathed quietly in fear of chasing that touch away, yet Sam didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The younger’s hand pushed back into his hair and rubbed water out of the thick strands, fingers bending to the midst of them like they belonged there.

"What if I hadn’t woken up?" he uttered against the angel’s shoulder, "God, what if I hadn’t woken up? What the hell were you thinking? Do you have - do you have any idea what…"  
His words trailed off and Gadreel felt him turn his head and press his face into his neck and breathe in the water still covering the older’s skin as he drew in the next inhale full of some deep tension like fear that Gadreel couldn’t properly read or place. His other palm stayed flat over the older’s spine but the other was caressing his hair and neck still, slowly and tensely and awkwardly but every one of this touches seemed to be the force that kept the angel’s heart still beating in the hold of his, and Gadreel’s whole self seemed to exist solely for those touches, as if he’d suddenly grown into an extension of the younger. He held on a little tighter, as tight as he dared, and breathed out a shaky breath.

"It’s okay."  
Sam’s voice changed; a warm drop was caught between their skins and his next breath was as shaky as Gadreel’s had been.  
"It’s okay now. You don’t have to do that. I’ve got you. I’m sorry I - I’m sorry I didn’t realise how bad it was for you. But for what it’s worth, I - I know now, and I’ve got you. I’m here - for what it’s worth, I’m here."

Something was leaking into the void within the angel; he feared he’d lost the ability to breathe now that he needed it to live, but when he regained control over himself, he couldn’t do more than push his head into the younger’s shoulder and let his body tremble next to his. The cold was turning to warmth that he stole from the younger’s being so close to his own and each second of it ached within him in a different way than any ache he’d ever experienced, the kind that he wanted never to stop. His fingertips bent into the other’s flesh and he realised that the warm water between him and the younger wasn’t water but tears, and he wondered how long he’d been able to shed them at all, and why it felt so easy for him to let them come now.


	2. Drowning

* * *

 

Cold lifted from Gadreel’s body slowly but certainly as the sun crawled higher up in the sky. Sam seemed to fear shifting, as if letting go even for a passing moment would mean that Gadreel would break free from him and walk right back into the river. The angel had no such desire, however; the moment had passed, and although he was distrustful of what would come after, each second spent still this close to Sam was a second he couldn’t bring himself to regret. He knew the younger was buying time by staying there, and that when they’d separate, there’d be a discomfort of a whole new sort - they’d been strangers for a long time, and now that carefully upheld illusion, the denial and the subsequent burial of what had passed between them, was broken leaving behind nothing but uncertain ground.

The fallen angel closed his eyes and allowed his head to rest back on Sam’s shoulder: he heard the small breath escaping the younger and felt him hold on tighter again.

"We should get you in dry clothes. And me," the hunter finally broke the thinning silence.

Gadreel drew away from him, head lowered, and nodded.

"Maybe some breakfast."

They returned after noon; Dean gave them a lingering, suspicious look but said nothing to stop them. The river flowed smoothly in its course and although its depth was still dark where the gentle banks gave in to the sudden drop, it no longer seemed to echo in Gadreel’s mind the way it had in the morning. He lowered himself on stiff legs to the ground and sat there, holding a knee against his chest and an arm around it, and for a while Sam stood there beside him before he too resigned and sat next to him, and not quite as far away as Gadreel had gotten used to.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, eyes upon the waters.

Gadreel didn’t know. He didn’t know if there was anything to talk of, or what he would have said; finally he shook his head instead. To his surprise, Sam reached a hand across the space between them, undid his hand from around his knee and brought it on the warm grass, his own on top of it. His fingers slid over the back of the angel’s palm again and again in a rhythm that imitated the quiet lapping of the calm waters ahead of them, but unlike in the flow there was no rush in his movements at all.

"Can I ask questions instead?"

Now the older nodded - his nod was hesitant, timid and tinted with shame, but he felt a distinctive wave of relief within him at the words. It seemed that he did not want to bury the event after all, but that he merely lacked the means to explain it or express himself: the phenomenom wasn’t new, and it was one of the things that seemed to keep him isolated from everything and everyone else no matter how much he longed for connection.

Sam’s hand held his more firmly for a moment before it finally retreated to hold his own legs in turn: his both knees were bent against his body and he gazed above them towards nothing in particular now. The bright sunlight enhanced the green in his eyes so that it seemed more alive than the green of the world that surrounded them; the golden crown around his pupils shone brightly in contrast to the black in its middle and Gadreel had to look away to not feel the rush of pain that was already entering him at remembering the colours of the soul that he could no longer see. He felt uncomfortable in his skin, alien to the flesh that he’d become, and the weakness in its strength strangled him worse the more he remembered what losses he’d suffered. His stomach churned, burning with black takeaway coffee that they’d had in place for breakfast, and a sigh crossed his lips in a heavy, pained manner that seemed to return determination to Sam.

"First, I need to make sure you won’t do it again. I need you to promise me that what happened today is never going to happen again. We don’t give up. I know it hurts - I know exactly how much it hurts - but in this team, giving up isn’t an option."

Gadreel couldn’t agree. The issue wasn’t in his will to let his allies down - the issue was that he didn’t feel he had them in the first place. He turned his eyes to Sam and he could feel the pleading expression in them, begging the younger to understand what he didn’t know how to put in words, and Sam responded to his gaze with a frown and Gadreel could see him try as if he was a book written in foreign language. The contact between them died to a reluctant sigh and Sam turned his face down, his fingertip tracing nothing into the dirt that was turning to fine muddy sand where his palm now rested and where grass no longer tied the ground together like it did where they sat.

"You can’t promise me, can you."

"I promise."

Gadreel’s response came so confidently and without delay that Sam’s head jerked up as if he needed a visual confirmation that the older had spoken it; their eyes met again and once Sam had seen the same confidence in the older’s gaze, he finally nodded, and a small smile pushed itself upon his lips.  
"That’s good to hear. It… makes the rest easier, I guess. That I can trust what happened isn’t going to happen again tomorrow. I can’t save you, you know. But I can try to help you and I want to do that. So… it’s not an easy question, but what do you need? Anything. Just tell me, even if it’s something that seems impossible."

Gadreel thought again: now was his turn to watch the river ahead of them, and the flow of it quieted his mind down. His thoughts kept racing even in the silence but they were organized and logical thoughts, not the kind that bounced up and down without giving him the opportunity to grasp them. What was it that he needed? His burnt grace, his wings, the chance to see the blaze of Sam Winchester’s soul once more, the chime of Heaven ringing in his ears like a distant promise that could never be fulfilled?  
A smile broke through to his lips as well and he shook his head.  
"Simple things, Sam Winchester."

"Like?"

"Yoghurt for breakfast. A chance to make this moment last longer, a single minute at a time; to feel as if I am a  _part_ , that I am not alone.”

"Yoghurt for breakfast. Right."  
The younger thought for a moment, now digging sand from underneath his nail as absently as he moved. His tongue flicked across his lips and he breathed in slowly, raised his eyes towards the sun where their colour was once more highlighted to its full spectrum and when he looked back down, he seemed to shiver despite the warm weather.  
"I’ve never really known how to approach you. I’ve wanted to, but I guess I’m afraid," he finally said.

Gadreel tilted his head in question, and without noticing, he’d pushed his hand between them as if offering it to the younger. Sam watched it for a moment before landing his own palm gently over it again.

"It’s not that hard, is it," he asked from no one in particular.

"I understand your fear," the angel replied heavily.

Sam raised his eyes to him and they watched one another briefly before he finally nodded.  
"It’s been a while now, hasn’t it. I mean - I’ve tried, I guess, I just haven’t tried hard enough. I’ve kept watching you and thinking how I could come to you but I’ve always given up when I haven’t found an easy way. It was easy today. It just happened. I’m sorry I took so long."

"You were not late."  
And he hadn’t been; Gadreel still felt the pain that had filled him at contact with the younger’s body. Sam smiled as he turned away: his eyes turned to the river again but the smile on him didn’t dim or die.

"I could have been," he said.

"But you were not. Is that not what matters? I am not your responsibility; I understand the regret you would have felt, but I had made my choice."

"How did you feel when I turned up?"

"I felt relieved. Saved. I did not want to do it, but I… wanted the release more than I feared the end."

Sam nodded.  
"Is it better now?" he asked, "I mean, do you feel like - you feel like anything’s changed?"

"Much has," Gadreel admitted, sighing.  
He felt stupid thinking back to the decision, but deep within him, he couldn’t deny still longing for the cold embrace of the water that surrounded him. It had promised such peace to him, peace that he feared he’d never have without it.  
"I felt as if there was no other way out. I feel differently now."

A quiet, joyless chuckle left Sam’s lips and he leaned his head down, eyes closed.  
"This is not the first time I think about this, but… it’s such a fucking farce that taking a life is easier than crossing a bridge."

Gadreel nodded slowly.  
"I fear I felt my life was a cheap price to pay to no longer feel chained to where I stood. I am glad that you crossed the bridge for me," he admitted.

"Yeah. I can’t keep doing that. So I’m glad you… I’m glad you’re taking responsibility."

"It will not happen again. I promised you."

It was Sam’s turn to nod again. He turned his eyes over to Gadreel and smiled in a tired way; his gaze bounced from the older’s eye to the other as if he was the most interesting thing in the world, and the angel felt a certain warmth rise to his cheeks under the attention granted to him.

"This isn't the best time," the hunter said in reference to something that the angel was not aware of.  
Then he waited, his smile slowly turning to something less weary in its tone, and finally a quiet, nervous laughter escaped him.  
"I wouldn't want to ruin anything."

"I am not sure I follow."

"No, you don't. You - probably don't, do you."  
The younger licked his lips again, and now the tip of his tongue stayed upon his lower lip for a fleeting moment longer; his eyes stopped to look the angel in the eye and he seemed to hold his breath as if in preparation.  
"Would you say you've felt like nothing would ever change? That your life would be the same day to day and nothing would ever break through that?"

Slowly, the older nodded.  
"I have felt as if I was trapped," he spoke slowly, uncertainly, "and I did not expect anything to change."

"Can I challenge that a little?"

The angel's head tilted again; he watched the younger keenly, curiously, even though he still remained reserved and slightly nervous.

"There are times when things seem - it just seems the same, day to day. Like it's going to be the same forever and nothing will change, not for better, and nothing will ever come and shake you awake from that. And then something does, and even if it's not something you want or need, it's... different, it's something that you never saw coming, and it's the push that you need to move on."

Sam drew in a nervous inhale and a small laughter escaped him. He shook his head, turned his eyes down and prepared, and Gadreel noticed that he was holding his breath in too as if his complete silence was required for the younger to come through with what he was preparing for.

"I'm going to kiss you. I've wanted to for a long time, and I think if there's ever been a time to do it, it'd be now. I don't think you'll hate it, but if you don't want to, you can turn me down now."

If the older had held his breath before, now he'd completely forgotten how to draw it in the first place. His heart raced, his mind was empty but ringing loudly, and in the expecting silence his lips parted; a shaky breath made its way out and he closed his eyes, body cold under the bright sunlight, and he felt the younger's body press closer like his aura was mixing in with his. The softness of his body landed over Gadreel's again, and his palm, skin still littered with grains of sand and dust from the earth, pressed over his jaw and cheek. Gadreel could feel the breath that broke between them just before Sam's lips were over his, soft as they pressed against him and gentle as they took a hold. His own hands were both raised, lost between their bodies as if wanting to touch but frozen in place, and it took him a moment to consciously move them to rest over Sam's body in a faint imitation of how he'd held the younger earlier in the morning.  
The hunter had been right: this one act shattered the reality in which the angel had been caught in, and he could feel something new pour in to fill him with everything he'd thought he'd lost. He felt excitement, fear, the deep painful ache that he never wanted to lose in its full power concentrating about his chest, and his heart was skipping beats if he could trust the way it felt and his whole world was as if literally shaking, trembling under the light contact between their lips. He tried to join it, tried to take a hold like Sam had done, and the younger chuckled into the kiss with his quiet voice full of relief and something like fondness, and another breath broke free from Gadreel and he felt it hit the younger's skin as Sam pulled away, eyes shining.

For a second that stretched on as if eternally, the only sound Gadreel could hear was that of his own thundering heartbeat. Then, suddenly and without his permission, he had dropped his gaze to the ground and shivered and he was breathing like he'd been drowning before.

"I guess today taught me that I have to do it now or I'll never get the chance," Sam said, and his breathless voice echoed from somewhere across a distance.  
Gadreel turned to look at him again and he could feel a shy smile on his lips, the kind he'd never thought to smile before.

"Would you do it again?" he asked, mind still empty but filling with longing; he needed to feel his world shatter again, just to know that it had happened before.  
It seemed as if for the first time in a long time he could see colour for what it was, not dulled and grey and uniform but bright and deep and all-consuming, and he needed more of that awareness, that experience, which he recognised as human beyond all measure yet not in the least foreign or uncomfortable for him to feel.

Without hesitation, the younger nodded.  
"I'd love to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** "Ooh please could you write a follow up to your last prompt? Just those two sat on the side of the river in the afternoon sun kissing and cuddling?"


End file.
